(Reuters) Armed militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at a school in the area, officials said.

A senior Pakistani Taliban commander claimed responsibility for the assault in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, but an official spokesman later denied involvement, calling the attack "un-Islamic".

The violence nevertheless shows that militants retain the ability to launch attacks, despite a country-wide anti-terrorism crackdown and a military campaign against their strongholds along the lawless border with Afghanistan.

A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 at Bacha Khan University in the city of Charsadda. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the campus six hours after the attack began, and that four gunmen were dead.

A spokesman for rescue workers, Bilal Ahmad Faizi, said 19 bodies had been recovered including students, guards, policemen and at least one teacher, named by media as chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain. Husain reportedly shot back at the gunmen with a pistol to allow his students to flee.

Many of the dead were apparently shot in the head execution-style, TV footage showed.

The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the university on Wednesday morning before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said.

Students told media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing where many students were sleeping.

"They came from behind and there was a big commotion," an unnamed male student told a news channel from a hospital bed in Charsadda's District Hospital. "We were told by teachers to leave immediately. Some people hid in bathrooms."

Thirty five of the wounded remain in hospital, a local police official said late on Wednesday.

(Breitbart) In one of their most gruesome slaughters to date, Islamic State militants stormed the city of Deir al-Zour in eastern Syria over the weekend, reportedly decapitating upwards of 150 people, including women and children, and abducting hundreds more.

“At least 150 people were beheaded yesterday by ISIS in the massacre of Deir al-Zour, including dozens of women and children,” reported the Italian ANSA news service, citing local sources in Syria.

State officials in Damascus place the number of deaths at 300, of whom most were women, children and elderly. Some of the victims were allegedly crucified.

The jihadists carried out a door-to-door massacre of civilians in Ayash and Begayliya, two Deir al-Zour neighborhoods controlled by the Syrian regime, sources reported.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that Islamic State soldiers kidnapped at least 400 civilians from families loyal to the regime from the Begayliya area during their attack Saturday, transferring them to the western countryside of Deir al-Zour. The Observatory confirmed that among the dead were also soldiers, paramilitaries and their families.

Sunday, January 17, 2016

WASHINGTON (NYP) — A Virginia man who was allegedly attempting to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State group and a man accused of helping him have been arrested.

Prosecutors said in a statement Saturday that 28-year-old Joseph Hassan Farrokh was arrested Friday at the airport in Richmond, Virginia. Officials said his ultimate destination was Syria.

Officials also arrested 25-year-old Mahmoud Amin Mohamed Elhassan, who they say drove Farrokh to Richmond. Both men are from Woodbridge, Virginia.

Farrokh, a U.S. citizen born in Pennsylvania, has been charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. Elhassan, a legal permanent U.S. resident originally from Sudan, has been charged with helping Farrokh. They are scheduled to make their first appearance in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Tuesday. Prosecutors said that if convicted, Farrokh and Elhassan each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Reports of casualties after an ISIS attack on government-held neighborhoods in Deir al-Zor varied between 135 and 300. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, reported that 400 had been kidnapped.

(CSM) An ISIS "massacre" and possible kidnapping in the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor may have left hundreds of civilians and fighters dead, according to monitoring groups and Syrian state media.

Up to 400 civilians were kidnapped in an Islamic State attack on government-held neighborhoods in the city and taken to the countryside, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a United Kingdom-based monitoring group.

"There is genuine fear for their lives, there is a fear that the group might execute them as it has done before in other areas," group founder Rami Abdul Rahman told Reuters. SOHR sources reported that victims of the kidnapping, an event that could not be independently verified, included families of pro-government forces.

(AFP) Fourteen people were killed Sunday when a suicide bomber struck a gathering of tribal elders at a prominent politician's home in Jalalabad, the second deadly attack in the eastern Afghan city in less than a week.

The Taliban denied responsibility for the bombing, which also left 13 people wounded on the eve of a second round of four-country negotiations aimed at restarting peace talks with the insurgents.

The carnage came during a "jirga", an assembly of tribal leaders, at the home of politician Obaiduallah Shinwari, who escaped unscathed.

"Fourteen people were killed and 13 others injured when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the house of Shinwari," said Najibullah Kamawal, the health director of Nangarhar province, of which Jalalabad is the capital.

Ambulances rushed to the scene, which was littered with pieces of human flesh, sandals and charred debris.More...

Suicide Bomber Targets Police Chief in Yemen's Aden, Kills 7

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — A suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle into the police chief's house in the southern Yemeni city of Aden on Sunday, killing seven civilians and security forces in a failed assassination attempt after militants killed two other security officials elsewhere in the country.

Police Chief Shallal Shayei survived a similar assassination attempt last month, as did the governor of the province earlier this month. Aden's previous governor was killed in an attack claimed by a local Islamic State affiliate.

Ambulances raced to the police chief's house after the explosion, which could be heard across the city, witnesses said. Officials said an armored vehicle blocked the suicide car bomber meters from the gates of the house. Seven people were killed and 12 injured after the explosion ripped through a bus that was passing by.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysian man was detained just hours before planning to blow himself up at an entertainment venue in Kuala Lumpur, a government official said Sunday, after authorities raised the alert level following bombings in neighboring Indonesia.

The 28-year-old Malaysian was detained Friday at a monorail station in Kuala Lumpur, said national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar. He said the man confessed he planned to blow himself up in an attack after receiving orders from members of the Islamic State group in Syria.

A government official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to release information, said Sunday that the man is an insurance salesman from northeast Terengganu state.

The official told The Associated Press he was detained just hours before his planned suicide attack at an entertainment outlet, either a karaoke bar or a pub.

Khalid said in a statement that the man also had been hanging Islamic State flags in several Malaysian states to oppose the government's crackdown on the militant group within the country. Khalid tweeted that "weapons and IS documents" were seized when the man was detained.

But he's now stranded in Greece, living in an abandoned hockey stadium. Farshad could face deportation after he, like thousands of others, was turned away by Macedonian border guards on the route to Germany.

"We tried to go, but the soldiers of Macedonia tell us 'Go back. No Iranian, go back.'"

Hundreds of other stranded migrants, many from North Africa, are being held under lock and key in a Greek detention center.

CBS News was denied permission to go inside, but one of the inmates sent us videos showing the conditions -- including a protest that he said was put down with tear gas.

Some European countries have built razor wire fences, and others will now only accept refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

As an Iranian, Farshad can go no further than Greece. His dreams of a new life in Europe are destroyed.

"We are human like other countries, we are not terrorists. Why the ways for Iranians is closed? Why?"

Nearly all of the migrants arriving in Europe set off in boats from Turkey. Last year, Europe promised Turkey around $3 billion in return for its help stemming the flow of people.

Geneva (AFP) - As Denmark faces a barrage of criticism over its controversial plan to seize refugees' valuables, Switzerland has already been doing so for years, Swiss authorities said Friday.

Swiss law has since the 1990s required asylum seekers to contribute to the costs of hosting them in the wealthy Alpine country.

The country is permitted to confiscate from people seeking asylum in the country amounts over 1,000 Swiss francs ($995, 913 euros), Celine Kohlprath, a spokeswoman for Swiss migration authorities, told AFP.

Her statement confirmed information revealed in a debate programme on the public SRF channel Thursday.

"This practice is based on the fact that Switzerland (wants) people arriving in Switzerland to contribute as far as possible to the costs of the asylum process and the social assistance provided," she wrote in an email.

An information notice given to asylum seekers on arrival was displayed on Thursday's "10 vor 10" debate programme, stating: "If you have ... more than 1,000 Swiss francs when you arrive at the reception centre, you must hand them over against a receipt."

Berlin (AFP) - Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Saturday raised the prospect of introducing a tax on petrol in Europe to pay for solving the migrant crisis, in remarks to the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

"If national budgets or the EU budget are insufficient, let's agree to set up, for instance, a tax of a certain amount on each litre of petrol," Schaeuble said.

"This way we would have the means for a European response to the refugee issue," he said, in an apparent reference to beefing up security at the European Union's outer borders in order to stop the migrant inflow.

"Finding a solution to the problem must not fail because of a lack of means."

His petrol tax proposal however met with swift criticism even from within the ranks of his CDU conservative party -- also that of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The party's vice president Julia Kloeckner, who claims to have talked with Merkel, said such an idea was indefensible because it tells taxpayers that it's up to them "to pay the bill" for refugees.